Samuel Whitbread (2) was born in Cardington, Bedfordshire in 1758, the only child of the brewer Samuel Whitbread, and Harriet Hayton. His mother died when he was five and he was brought up with every privilege his father’s growing fortune could buy, educated at Eton, Christ Church, Oxford and St. John’s College, Cambridge, and then sent on the Grand Tour.

He returned in May 1786 to help his father run the family brewing business and in 1789 married Elizabeth Grey, the sister of Charles Grey, MP, his friend from his Cambridge years. On his own election to the House as MP for Bedford in 1790, Whitbread joined Grey as a Radical Whig and supporter of Charles James Fox. He proved an effective debater, harrying William Pitt, the Tor

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First published 02 November 2004

[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5857, accessed 20 November 2009.]